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To me it just looks like rhetoric, an us vs. them type deal. Call something terrorism so that you can justify using any kind of violence against them basically.
by kelipso 2y ago
To me it just looks like rhetoric, an us vs. them type deal. Call something terrorism so that you can justify using any kind of violence against them basically.
- robertlagrant 2y agoNot really. Not all violence is terrorism. Not all bad things are terrorism either. But terrorism is always bad. Ukrainians killing Russian soldiers isn't terrorism. Hezbollah trying to kill Israeli civilians is terrorism.
- kelipso 2y agoWhat would you call Russians killing Ukrainian soldiers and IDF killing Lebanese civilians then?
- robertlagrant 2y ago> What would you call Russians killing Ukrainian soldiers War.
- 2Gkashmiri 2y ago[flagged]
- robertlagrant 2y ago[flagged]
- danbruc 2y agoBut terrorism is always bad. Suppose some country occupies another country and the occupied country has no proper army to fight back, therefore they resort to methods of unconventional warfare to fight back against the occupation. Would some call this terrorism? Would this qualify as terrorism given some proper definition of the term and objective judgment of the situation? Would it be bad? What if they not only target the military of the occupier but also their civilians as it is them who voted for the government doing the occupation? What if they did this out of some kind of necessity because targeting the occupying military is not effective given the power imbalance?
- anigbrowl 2y agoThis book does an OK job of examining those philosophical arguments. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/terrorism-and-the-right-to-resist/D6BEAA33772DDA4BD4D04205790A9E84 https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/terrorism-and-the-right...
- gryzzly 2y agoabsolutely. there are plenty of examples of what you described and not all are blowing cafes and buses with civilians
- gryzzly 2y agosome kind of necessity in this case is the death cult of islamism - it should be clear that glorifying martyrdom and calling a suicide bomber a martyr is that type of necessity
- danbruc 2y agoSuicide bombers at least really have skin in the game compared to blowing up people half way around the world by drones at the press of a button. If you want to look down on people, then do it for their reasons to fight or the targets they pick, not for their choice of weapon.
- gryzzly 2y agoIt’s the choice of target, rather than the weapon that makes me look down on them. Aiming to blow up bystanders is disgusting, not sure how you made this be about "choice of weapon".
- danbruc 2y agoBecause you were only talking about martyrdom and suicide bombing which is a choice of weapon, there is not a single word relating to choice of target in your comment. One could maybe see some implicit hint at the choice of target as suicide bombings are most effective and mostly used for a specific kind of targets and they are often pretty indiscriminate attacks. But as you can target more or less the same targets with non-suicide bombings as with suicide bombings and you were specifically talking about suicide bombings and not bombings in general, this is not something that you should expect people to take away from your comment. By the way, I am not sure you understood necessity in the way I wanted it understood. I wanted to say what if they target civilians because they do not have the means to effectively target the military, i.e. if it is necessary to target civilians in order to have any impact at all. And you can target civilians in various ways, so martyrdom and suicide bombings are not necessary. It is, I would assume, however true that martyrdom and certain religious views about an afterlife make suicide bombings a much more viable weapon than otherwise.
- tradertef 2y agoCompletely agree. Similar things are happening in Egypt, Turkey and other places..
- ericmcer 2y agoIt isn't rhetoric... It is a specific combat strategy that small nations employ against huge ones. By targeting non-combatants and creating "terror" you can break the will of a larger nation. If the USA in 2001 could have waved a magic wand that killed all the Taliban and didn't touch a hair on any non-combatants head they would have waved it and called it a day.